


a place I once called home

by kostia



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Canon Compliant, Clothing, F/M, M/M, Montreal, Moving, Moving In Together, Moving Out, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:54:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27567088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kostia/pseuds/kostia
Summary: Patrick leaves a city that isn't quite home and finds a town that always will be.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer & Rachel, Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Patrick Brewer/Rachel
Comments: 37
Kudos: 132





	a place I once called home

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on a road trip right now, and the way my music shuffled in the car this afternoon sparked something in me. This just sort of came to me as a fully formed collection of moments, and I decided that I was going to write it.
> 
> Reader, I have _never written fic before_.
> 
> Schitt's Creek affects me more than any other television show I can ever remember, with the possible exception of Sherlock. I've been reading Sherlock fanfiction for a lot of years. I am deeply invested in it. But I never wrote a single word of it myself.
> 
> Something about Patrick and David takes me out of the world. I hope you enjoy.

Rachel walked into the room with her phone in her hand and her eyes wide. “McGill called.”

“Yeah? You thought the last interview went really well. So? What’d they say?”

“They … they want me. I can’t believe it. It’s a full-time instructor position, and it could lead to tenure track. They’ll give me support to finish my dissertation next year. It’s unbelievable.”

“What did _you_ say?”

“Patrick … I said yes right away. I took it. I’m sorry, I didn’t—"

“So we’re moving to Montreal.”

“Patrick, are you saying you really want to come with me? Are you sure? Your family is here, it’s a big city, you—”

“We’re _engaged,_ Rach. Of course I’m coming with you.”

She made a sort of half-laugh, half-sobbing sound and threw herself into his arms. She was honestly surprised. Patrick wasn’t sure why. This is how it was supposed to go, right? There was nothing keeping him here. His business degree was done; he could get work anywhere, he figured. A big city wasn’t really what he wanted, but it was probably the smart choice.

He kissed the top of her head, and he held her as she buried her face in his chest. He could feel her grinning as she started talking about their plans. Her plans.

Their plans. Yes.

* * *

Montreal was a beautiful city, a cool mix of old and new. He liked it. His French sucked, but he got by. He said “bonjour hi” a lot, so people would speak English, and he got used to being mistaken for a tourist. He missed his parents, he missed a few friends, and sometimes he missed the quiet, the trees flowing in the breeze, but he liked Montreal. It was colorful and vibrant and alive, and he felt like if he let himself, maybe someday _he_ could be colorful and vibrant and alive.

Rachel was thriving. The job was perfect. He was working from their tiny apartment, helping people online with business plans and grant proposals, and it was fine. In the fall semester Rachel had been really busy, carrying three sections herself and training a new graduate assistant. They saw each other at night and in the mornings, and occasionally she’d pop back for lunch if she had time. She’d tell him about her day, laugh about the best students and complain about the bad ones. It wasn’t that different from the community college job she’d had back home, but she had a glow about her that was new.

So Rachel was thriving.

* * *

For as long as he could remember, making love to her had been fine. Fun. Not anything life-shattering, but fun. He figured life-shattering sex was rare, and if he didn’t have it, that was fine.

They’d started out together not knowing what the hell they were doing, and he’d learned what she liked and what she didn’t. She was game to try new things. And during some of their longer breakups he’d slept with other girls here and there. Once or twice after she’d pulled him back to her again, she’d try something new. He tried not to think about where she might have learned new things, but it didn’t really seem fair to resent it. He hadn’t bothered to pick up anything from the other girls, and maybe it was a nice benefit for him that she had expanded her horizons here and there.

The first time she’d put her finger in his ass while she had his cock in her mouth he heard sirens and saw plaid. He came hard, not quite knowing why, and he kissed her and thanked her over and over. She was a little miffed that he’d come so fast, but he went down on her for a while and figured they had both had a pretty good time. But she only did that a few more times.

* * *

About three months after the move, they were lying in bed after sex, and he was still breathing rough. He’d gone hard and fast, and she’d been into it, with one knee over his shoulder, but it had taken him a long time to come, and he’d been panting.

“Why do you close your eyes?” she asked.

“What? When?”

“Every time we have sex, you look at my face, you look into my eyes while you’re touching me, but you close your eyes when you … you know, at that first moment. When you’re first inside me.”

He thought about it. He guessed he did do that.

“I guess it’s like closing your eyes when you kiss someone. I just do. It’s not like I’m thinking of someone else or imagining it’s not you.”

She tilted her head and looked at him carefully, pulling back out of his arms a bit.

“I … I didn’t think that.”

He thought about it later. Why had he assumed that was what she thought?

* * *

When it all went wrong, it seemed simple. One thing after another added up. It was getting to be winter. He really wasn’t a city person. He missed being outside. He missed campfires and starlight and tents. And he was pretty sure he knew something about himself he wasn’t ready to say.

Montreal was cold and hard, its vibrancy and color seeming to fade to gray.

But of course the city wasn’t gray. He was gray. It was his color, coming off him in waves and affecting the way he saw everything around him. Rachel stopped telling him funny stories about school. She’d long since stopped coming home for lunch, and when she didn’t get home until long after dark she’d blame it on prepping for exams, doing extra office hours, a TA not pulling their weight. She said she didn’t have time for much else but work.

Meanwhile, Patrick had all the time in the world to replay the last five months of his life over and over on a loop. There were moments he’d focus on, words he’d obsess over.

He closed his eyes every time he had sex with his fiancée, and he was starting to realize why.

* * *

There was shouting. There was crying. But he couldn’t do it anymore. He needed to start over. He knew full well there’d be text messages of random characters in a week, in a month, in two months. He told himself he’d ignore them. He hoped he’d ignore them.

* * *

He shut the trunk lid, not without effort, and went back into the apartment for the last time, just to grab his jacket and a bottle of water and to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. One last check of the medicine cabinet and the bedside table, and that would be it.

All these years, half his life, and that would be it.

There were two bottles of ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet, both almost full, so he grabbed one of them, figuring that was fair and that he’d probably have a sore back from driving whenever he stopped that night. There was nothing else.

He went to the coat closet to get his jacket and stopped short. His jacket wasn’t there. He’d pulled all his clothes out and put them in the car. _All_ his clothes. The ones out of the left side of the dresser, the ones out of the left side of the closet in the bedroom, and the ones out of the fucking coat closet. He’d packed _all_ his clothes.

And then he’d put six boxes of books on top of them, like some sort of unstoppable idiot.

For someone who genuinely enjoyed packing, Patrick was not actually very good at it when his mind was elsewhere.

* * *

The car was fucking freezing. He pulled his sleeves over his hands and turned the heat up to _MAX,_ but it didn’t help. Little sputtering noises came out of the dash, and the occasional bursts of actual hot air just reminded him of the cold.

As he pulled out of the city, he saw a touristy sort of souvenir shop on a corner and pulled into a nearby parking spot. Maybe they’d have a cheap sweatshirt or something.

There was a jacket in his size on the clearance rack. A zip-up sort of hoodie windbreaker thing. It said MONTREAL in capital letters across the front, MONT on one side of the zipper and REAL on the other. It was kind of tacky, but it was warm, and at least it was navy blue with white letters and not yellow or pink or something. And once he wasn’t actually _in_ Montreal, it wouldn’t seem quite so ridiculous.

He put it on, yanked the tag off the sleeve, and went up to the counter to pay for it. Without really thinking or looking around, he handed the tag to the young man working the register and said, “I’ll just wear this, so I don’t need a bag or anything. The heat in my car isn’t working, and all my goddamn clothes are packed under the goddamn boxes.”

“You know, we really don’t need that much information,” the clerk said.

Patrick realized what he’d said and saw the guy smirk in a funny way, sort of smiling with one side of his face. There was a mirrored display behind the counter, and he saw his own reflection open its mouth stupidly.

“No, I don’t suppose you do. Sorry, I—”

“—just broke up with your boyfriend and you’re leaving town in a rush. Been there. Find a guy who makes you happy. It’s twenty-two fifty for the jacket.”

Patrick reached into his back pocket for his wallet before he’d quite heard the clerk. He looked up again and started to correct the bad assumption. He’d broken up with a woman, after all. He’d never had a boyfriend to break up with. That was, of course, part of the problem. He had no idea how to find a guy to make him happy, but he would love it if he did. In a split second, as he considered saying this, it occurred to him that he needed to say exactly _none_ of it, but then he saw his reflection. With his arm bent to get his wallet, only half the jacket showed.

REAL, it said. Well, it said LAER, backward, but still. REAL.

So instead of saying “I need to find a _woman_ to make me happy,” or “I’m not gay,” or “Not a boyfriend,” he handed over a credit card and said:

“That’s the plan.”

* * *

The first time he made David Rose laugh a little, he remembered the guy at the souvenir store with the same crooked smirk. The universe works in mysterious ways.

* * *

He and David were officially moving in together. Finally. He felt completely different from when he’d moved to Montreal with Rachel. That had felt, at least in retrospect, like some sort of alternate ending branching off the choose-your-own-adventure book of his life. This felt like the right next chapter. Like a new beginning. A sequel, but also a prequel. The start of something.

David did make him pare down a lot of his stuff so they’d have room for all the clothes he was still storing in the motel’s honeymoon suite, but that was okay. There were two boxes of books he’d literally never opened since coming to Schitt’s Creek, and after a cursory glance at the titles he let them go. His arms had gotten a little bigger from lifting boxes at the store and (who was he kidding) working out because David liked his arms like that, so there were some shirts he didn’t wear anymore. Including one short-sleeved number that David positively _crowed_ about getting rid of.

And there was a tacky navy blue jacket he hadn’t worn in four years. It said MONTREAL across the front.

“What the actual fuck is this?”

“Oh, right! I bought that the day I left Montreal and started on my way here. Well, my way that ended up being my way here.”

David recoiled. “But _why?_ Why would you buy this?”

“The heat in the car wasn’t working, and all my coats were packed under the boxes, and I needed something warm and cheap.”

“Fashion does not include priorities like ‘warm’ and ‘cheap.’ Thank God you found me in time.”

Patrick laughed. “Yes, thank God I found you, but it’s not about fashion. I was freezing!”

He paused and remembered that day. Pre–Schitt’s Creek. Pre–David Rose. The first time he’d let someone assume he was gay.

“And … this is silly, but … the clerk assumed I was gay, and I didn’t correct him, and when I put that on and saw myself in the mirror, I liked how half of it said REAL.”

“It’s terrible. You know it’s terrible. It’s _not_ real. It’s polyester, Patrick. And it’s missing the accent on the E in Montréal.”

“You don’t have to put an accent if it’s all capital letters.”

“Not even a little bit the point. We’re throwing this away. We’re throwing this _far_ away.”

* * *

“I have a housewarming gift for you,” said David.

“What? You don’t have to give a housewarming gift to the person you’re moving in with!” Patrick was genuinely upset. He’d given David engagement rings, a wedding present, a _house._ He’d even made dinner the night before. He’d done some very _warming_ things that very morning before they got out of bed. But a housewarming gift hadn’t occurred to him. Was he supposed to get David a housewarming gift?

“Obviously. But still, I am.” He handed Patrick a flat giftwrapped package, rectangular, maybe a foot wide. It felt like a framed picture.

“Is this, like, the first receipt from the store since we got married, or something? Because that’s adorable, but it’s been done.”

David rolled his eyes to the ceiling and just gestured for Patrick to open the wrapping paper.

Patrick tore it open. It _was_ a picture frame. But it wasn’t a receipt.

Inside the frame was a piece of navy blue polyester with four white letters sewn on.

_REAL._

“David, you said this was terrible. You said you were throwing it ‘far away.’ I remember.”

“I remember too. You said you bought it the day you started on your way here. The day you started on your way to me. How could I _ever_ forget that?”

Patrick beamed. “Let’s never forget that.”

David smiled, a real smile, with his whole face.

“That’s the plan.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by Noah Reid's "TIFF Song," whose penultimate verse goes as follows:
> 
> I bought this jacket  
> Because the front said Montreal  
> That’s a town I had to leave I didn’t want to leave at all  
> And when I wear it  
> It makes me feel alone  
> It's a reminder that I needed a reminder  
> Of a place I once called home
> 
> I find that verse to be just so skillfully structured. It's really excellent lyric writing, and it's simultaneously sad and hopeful. This isn't my favorite of Noah's songs ("Mostly to Yourself," anyone?), but it's lovely.


End file.
